1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to computer networks and more particularly to monitoring a BitTorrent network.
2. Background Information
The BitTorrent protocol is concerned with the reliable transfer of files. Users may search for torrent files, which are then used to download content of interest from “swarm” computers over a network, using a variety of methods. For example, a user may find particular torrent files by searching indexing sites/tracker sites by searching peer-to-peer (P2P networks, by joining Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, or by utilizing other types of BitTorrent management pages. Each BitTorrent management page can have its own syntax and format. Accordingly, there is no single or consistent way to probe for context across the variety of different BitTorrent management we pages. Further, there is no centralized BitTorrent network where all participants can potentially be reached through connection hopping. Instead, each torrent “swarm” is an enclosed community, each Tracker site has no protocol level connection to the next, and indexing sites are disjoint from the one another.